Getting Out of the Way

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 49: 1-7 and John 1: 29-42 Sermon Title: Getting Out of the Way Preached on January 19, 2020 Last Thursday afternoon I saw something remarkable. Remarkable things happen and I’m thankful when I notice them. Our daughter Lily was the one who pointed this one out. We were walking with her friend Julia, leaving the church after helping out at Club 3:30, our afterschool program. Once she pointed it out, we all stopped dead in our tracks because walking across the Harris Hines Memorial Bridge was a pink dog. That’s right. A pink dog. The woman walking the dog saw us gawking but just kept strolling normally as though she were walking a normal dog. She wasn’t. That dog was pink, and we caught up to her to ask her about it. Once we caught up, we could tell that this pink dog belongs to Maggie, daughter of Janet Lewis. Maggie just wanted to give her dog a pink mohawk, only the dog moved while she was dying it so Maggie ended up dying her whole dog pink, which is something that never once occurred to me to do. I’ve never thought of dying my dog’s hair, but Maggie has. Isn’t that remarkable? It’s so important to stop and notice when you see something remarkable. The most remarkable sight that anyone has ever seen walked up to John the Baptist and John the Baptist stopped to notice. Last Sunday we focused on John the Baptist just as we do today, but this week is different. Last week we read a Scripture Lesson from the Gospel of Matthew that described John’s willingness to step forward to baptize Jesus. John hesitated, not feeling worthy of baptizing Jesus. In stepping forward and answering the call to baptize the Lord in the Jordan, John models a courage that we need to have too for God calls on us all to step forward. However, while John the Baptist had the courage to step forward even though he felt unworthy, what we see in today’s Scripture Lesson from the Gospel of John is that he also had the wisdom to step back in awe and wonder. Last week he stepped forward to do something. This week he gets out of the way. We must be able to do both possessing the wisdom to know which we should do at any given time. Not everyone has that kind of wisdom, but people must know how to step back. If they don’t, they can be very annoying to be around. There are some people in this world who don’t know when to step forward to speak, but at the same time there are plenty of people who don’t know when to stop talking. There are some people in this world who never try, but there are plenty of other people who try too hard. There are some people in this world who don’t know how to accept praise, who have no capacity to receive a compliment, but there are so many others who never step back to give others their due, serving as the president of their own fan club, wanting all the good news to be about them. Do you know anyone like that? Of course you do, because while there are people who have trouble stepping forward, there are others who don’t know how to step back, so consider John again today. Last Sunday we saw how he stepped up to ministry when he was called on. Today we see that he also steps back for when he saw Jesus coming toward him, he points away from himself to declare: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” In thinking about John’s example now for two weeks in a row I realize that I don’t always have the courage or the nerve to step forward. Neither do I always have the wisdom or humility to step back. A funny thing about being a preacher is that you stand at the door as everyone leaves the service. The reason we do this is to greet you, the members of the congregation, and to connect with you as your pastors. An added bonus is that we also become those who receive all the compliments. You are such a gracious group of people, and you so generously tell me when the choir sang so beautifully, when the flowers looked just perfect, even when the floors are clean. Regardless of whom should receive the compliment I am often the one who receives them. Do you know what I always say? “Thank you.” I guess there’s nothing else I could say. Only consider for a moment just how many hands go into crafting this worship service. Someone must print the bulletins, another hands them out. There are speakers and microphones which have been maintained and controlled from up in the sound booth. Music is played on the organ, prayers have been written and proofread, hymns sung. There are too many parts of this worship service for any one person to take credit for. Plus, all of what goes on here is empty without the Holy Spirit, yet I am the one who says, “Thank you.” That doesn’t make any sense; however, this is so often the way it is. Consider all the people you know who never step back to thank those whose shoulders they stand on. How many quarterbacks bask in the limelight without thanking those who blocked for them? How many dig into their meal without giving thanks to God from whom all blessings flow and for the hands who prepared the food? How many hours in a day do we spend looking at our phones when pink dogs are walking by? We wake up to scarlet sunrises. We sleep under a galaxy of stars, and still some spend so much time navel gazing that they would have failed to take notice of even “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” I’m as guilty as anybody. The church I served in Lilburn was facing a financial crisis, which they emerged from. They went from a massive forecasted budget deficit to a large financial surplus. When I left that church for First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, TN, a former college president, Dr. Herold Pryor had heard this story from my resume. At a meet and greet with the entire congregation present he asked me down in the Fellowship Hall what I had done to achieve such a success. Sarcastically I said, “well, I’m a financial genius.” Of course, that isn’t true. I’m not a financial genius. Still, it was on my resume because it’s hard to explain when the God of miracles acts and it’s easy for humans to take the credit. We all want to be the somebody who can fix it or did fix it. We see problems and we pressure leaders to do something about them. If a leader of this country were to say, “Well, I’ve prayed about unemployment and I trust that God will do something about it” she’d never get elected because it seems passive to step back and point to the heavens. No one wants to admit that they can’t do it. No wants to admit that they can’t help. For we’re all the time pretending we have it all together, so it’s time we learned from John that having it all together is not what’s required. I think about the Rev. Billy Graham. You know he preached across the country and the world asking us to do this one thing: “Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” Who knows how many lives he changed just by asking this one question? Who knows how many faced their end without fear because of their answer? But we must not think for a minute that this is a simple request, for acknowledging Christ as Lord and Savior requires accepting that we cannot save ourselves. That’s a hard thing to do. Don’t think it’s not, for we all fall into the trap of believing that we’re doing pretty well on our own. That we just need to work a little bit harder. That we can hold it all together if we just wake up a little earlier. So, listen to this. Someone once asked Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, who was a Presbyterian, if she’d ever considered divorce. She said, “Oh no. Absolutely not. However, I’ve often considered murder.” That’s a funny story, but I tell it because it’s also a liberating one. Don’t look to the mere mortal. Look to the One all the great preachers, mere mortals themselves, have pointed towards, because everyone is need of His grace. Everyone. That Prayer of Confession in your bulletin: do you know who it comes from? Me. Do you know where I gain inspiration for those prayer? My sin. So maybe some of these prayers don’t all fit your life, but don’t go through that thing like a checklist. Because these are my confessions, I worry that they don’t always fit your life, only don’t look at that prayer and think through it like this: Together we prayed: We confess that we have not sought your face, but I worry that someone might have added to their prayer, “well God, maybe Joe hasn’t but I’ve been seeking your face.” Then we continued Focused on ourselves we look past your presence and the needs of others, and maybe someone looked heavenward self-satisfied saying, “All good there.” Then finally the prayer continued, Rather than sing the praise of our redeemer, we take center stage. Did any of you pray, “Lord, I’m good here too, but we have some work to do on our preacher”? Some of us read through the prayer of confession on Sunday morning and use it as a nice, weekly, internal audit. Only that’s not the point, because while we all want to be good, while we all want to be innocent, the prayer of confession invites us to face our faults so that we can receive his grace. That’s the truth. I know doing so is a lot to ask. We don’t want to ask for help. No one does. No one likes the truth that we are broken and need His healing. We like to teach and don’t want to be taught. Knowing how stubborn we can all be, recognize the strength it took for John the Baptist who “saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”” It’s not me. It’s him. I can’t do it, but he can. I cannot hold it together, and here is one who holds the whole world in his hands. I am not good, but he is so good. A counselor once said it to me this way: sometimes we must stop trying to fill our own cup, to see that he has already filled it. We must step back from our problems to see him answer our prayers. We struggle to be worthy, because we want to be loved but step back, because you are already. Get out of the way and allow him to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Amen.